Thread: Denying state services will cost millions

http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=8335


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Publish Date: 6/20/2006

Denying state services will cost millions


By John Fryar
The Daily Times-Call

DENVER — Creating a system to make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting government services in Colorado could carry a multimillion-dollar price tag.

That, at least, was the conclusion in a report from the Legislature’s staff last year, after a Colorado Springs lawmaker introduced a bill proposing prohibitions on certain state and county government services from being provided to anyone not in this country legally.

The relative costs and savings of a separate measure prohibiting certain services to illegal immigrants, which is proposed for November’s ballot, are expected to become a focus of legislative debate again this year, if lawmakers return to the Capitol for a special summer session.

Republican Rep. Dave Schultheis’ House Bill 05-1271, for example, could have cost state government an estimated $4.3 million to implement the first year it was in effect, legislative staffers reported last year.


Those projected costs would have included agency expenses for new identity-verification procedures and computer systems to determine if people seeking services are either U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

The Legislature’s staff made no estimate of what county-government ID-verification costs would be under last year’s bill.

Schultheis said Monday in an interview, however, that he “just about choked” when he saw last year’s cost estimates for his bill, which died in a 6-5 party-line vote, with Democrats prevailing, in the House State Affairs Committee.

Schultheis called the $4.3 million projection “totally a bogus number,” which he said stemmed from state agencies’ reluctance to carry out proposed requirements for verifying citizenship.

An initiative being proposed by Defend Colorado Now — the probable subject of a special summer legislative session unless the Colorado Supreme Court reverses its Jan. 12 decision blocking the measure from being petitioned onto the November ballot — would prohibit services to illegal immigrants by municipalities, school districts and special taxing districts, as well the state and county agencies.

Schultheis, however, maintained Monday that there shouldn’t be “an overwhelming cost” for state and local governments to comply with that ban, notwithstanding the fiscal analysis of his 2005 bill.

But Rich Jones, research and policy director for the Bell Policy Center, said Monday that his Denver think tank concluded last winter that the costs of implementing such ban, which would not include emergency medical treatment or federally mandated services, would far outweigh any government savings that might result.

Even under Defend Colorado Now’s proposal, state and local governments would have to continue paying for public education for illegal immigrants’ children and for emergency medical care, Jones said.

He added that state and federal laws already prohibit illegal immigrants from getting welfare benefits, food stamps or non-emergency Medicaid services.

Jones noted that last year’s legislative analysis of Schultheis’ bill identified only about $460,600 in possible savings, chiefly through reduced spending on state child-welfare services to abused or neglected illegal-immigrant children.

Schultheis, though, said projected state and local government savings from a cutoff for illegal immigrants are likely to be far higher than $460,000 a year.

He said if illegal immigrants weren’t already getting non-emergency services beyond what federal law requires, foes “wouldn’t have any problem just letting this go” to the ballot.

Jones, though, said the Defend Colorado Now measure could include bans on “a whole range of things” that go beyond welfare.

For example, he said, taken to an extreme, the prohibitions could be interpreted as requiring local governments to get proof of citizenship or legal residency before providing local trash pickup, water and sewer and electric service, or allowing rides on public buses or entrance to public libraries.

John Fryar can be reached by e-mail at jfryar@times-call.com.



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The costs of enforcing immigration laws

Colorado lawmakers already have earmarked more than $7 million in state spending to cover at least part of the costs of a package of illegal-immigration crackdowns they adopted earlier this year.

That includes more than $2.1 million alone for the 2006-07 budget year that begins July 1.

The Legislature pledged the remaining money, nearly $5 million, to cover future 2007-08 through 2010-11 prison costs stemming from two new immigration-related felony crimes — smuggling or trafficking in illegal immigrants — that lawmakers created during this year’s regular session.

Appropriations clauses in the Legislature’s regular-session illegal-immigration measures included:


• $2.6 million for the construction and operating expenses needed from fiscal 2006-07 through 2010-11 to house inmates convicted of the new felony crime of smuggling illegal immigrants.

• $2.6 million for the construction and operating expenses projected through fiscal 2010-11 for inmates convicted of the new felony crime of trafficking in adults, including trafficking in illegal immigrants.

• $1.5 million for the fiscal 2006-07 startup and operating costs of a 12-person Colorado State Patrol unit charged with enforcing the new anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking laws.

• $140,166 for the Department of Labor and Employment’s projected 2006-07 budget costs — including salaries and benefits for up to two new employees — of helping enforce a new state law prohibiting state and local government agencies from contracting with businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

• $69,879 to cover the Attorney General’s Office’s projected 2006-07 budget costs of helping the Department of Labor enforce a new crackdown on the production or distribution of forged identity documents that illegal immigrants could use to fraudulently establish eligibility to work in the United States.

Blah, Blah, Blah, another excuse to do nothing. All of a sudden they care about cost when it comes to getting off their lazy, incompetent a$$es and doing their jobs.

They think the projected millions of immigrants in the next two decades and births, wouldn't cost a looooooooot more????????????????????

Ah, come on.

IF we can get the border shut down. We are talking about a 1 time cost to impliment what ever needs to be implimented to make sure illegals are not milking the system. As opposed to a lifetime of entitlement they will recieve which will cost a lot more. If we do not close the border...well that will push this country beyond what it is able to support.